Be there, done that, bought the T-shirt. In forty years founding and managing nonprofit theatre companies this is the never-ending story and always the same. I just left a company because of Board intervention infused with panic. I'm afraid it's the end of the line for me as an arts manager. Too much energy expended for the return. Florida Stage just closed after twenty-five years with no explanation or even a fight to keep it going. Pitiful. jrb

Brendan,

As someone who declined to be interviewed I was certainly quoted a lot. I really didn't expect the private letter I wrote to you to be quoted in this story. It's really frustrating and the reason I declined to be interviewed by you in the first place. I didn't trust that you wouldn't 1) quote me out of context, 2) misquote me or 3) simplify or misrepresent what I actually said.

I also, very naively assumed that if you were going to quote me you'd ask my permission first. In my experience, It's what any other journalist would do.

I am not afraid to go on the record about non profit Boards or The Empty Space. I just didn't trust that the full complexity of the issues could be adequately represented in your story.

For readers who are the least bit interested, here's what I actually wrote to Brendan about why I didn't want to go on the record:

"I think that the history of The Empty Space (and it's ultimate closure) is a really long, complicated story and can't be chalked up to just a failure on the Board's part. When I got to The Empty Space as a literary intern in 1987, The Empty Space was on the brink of closing. When I eventually took over as Artistic Director in 2001, The Empty Space was on the brink of closing. In the 13 years between my internship and my leadership role, The Empty Space had been on the brink of closing many other times. The Empty Space didn't close any of those times because of strong management (Melissa Hines), a tenacious staff, public support for the work and a passionate, committed Board of Directors.

The Empty Space Board for most of my tenure were nothing short of heroic. People gave generously of their time, knowledge and resources. Things fell apart however after our 2005 emergency campaign completely burnt out our (already burnt-out) Board. By the time we got our ragged, exhausted asses to The Lee Center at Seattle University the war for survival had already taken its toll. Our board was down to about 6 people (in and of itself a terrible sign). Some minor debt spooked our Board and literally overnight, the theater was shut down. Did I agree with the decision? Absolutely not. Did I have any control over the decision? No.

I still consider the closure a major defeat. It is a deeply painful subject for me. I feel that the closure betrayed the trust of the many artists, donors, subscribers and supporters who had given so much to us over the years. It is not a story which can be summarized quickly or in which blame can be easily assigned.

My bottom line is this; because there were so many Board members over a 35 year period who behaved heroically, I feel that speaking out against a few destructive Board members would be a betrayal to the good guys. These good guys are the people who endlessly did things like write personal checks to cover payroll, put their houses up as collateral against bank loans and killed themselves doing emergency fundraising campaigns. Was any of this a reasonable or sustainable strategy for long term stability? No, of course not. But so often smaller arts organizations live in a perpetual state of crisis or emergency. And so our Board did all of these things because they believed in the theater, it's mission and the role it served in the community. And because at the time, they felt they didn't have a choice except to give everything they had.

I could bitch my head off about the few board members who pushed The Empty Space off the cliff. And sometime over a cocktail, I'd be happy to. But in good conscience, because of all the good guys, I can't do it in print."

I guess I just went on the record.

Allison Narver

I just want to know what happened to the hot Jewish woman who used to conduct the after-show discussions.

We are all so weird about going on the record because we have so much trouble being honest face-to-face. We'll bitch and moan and believe we have the right view, but there is something in our shared community culture about being called to account for your words.

As for boards, they hear what they want to hear. They wanted to hear that Richter was a problem because they didn't want to deal with him - nevermind the fact he ran an artistically successful space and kept it in the black. They also want to hear that everything is alright, so the job of the $100k+/yr MD is to show them that story. And, as soon as the board has heard enough, whether or not it is the full story, to justify the belief they want to hold, they stop looking.

And, really, that means the MD can easily fall into the "teaching to the test" trap, and always prepare the story nub that allows him/her to keep her/his job. Boards are most willing to listen to people they feel are on their par - meaning, six-figure earners. That is not, however, what a potentially healthy ecosystem of arts orgs needs.

The really unfortunate thing is they have managed to massage that financial narrative mostly by cutting staff and hours. Today's arts orgs survive on entry-level jobs and six-figure leaders with no middle ground. I think it is time to re-examine that model.

Allison's comments illustrate a glaring issue that the community has: irresponsible, lazy and destructive reporting from The Stranger and specifically from it's theatre editor. Why write an article about what happened at the Intiman, with a thesis of "People don't want to talk boards, because it is a boring topic." Obviously it isn't a boring topic, given the amount of discussion drummed up about it.

Clearly, Kiley is as successful a critic as he was a theatre artist.

@3
Way to keep it classy.

@2
Allison, The only way to learn the lesson of always prefacing communications with journalists as "on the record" or "off the record" is by getting burned. While understanding why you feel the way you do, I have to say that your email was wonderfully articulate and enlightening and I for one am grateful that you posted the whole thing here.

@Brendan
As an Intiman (I guess former) season ticket holder, I thought this was a great article. Thank you for staying on the story and writing it.

I've been waiting for a long, in-depth piece on the Intiman and similar topics. Thanks, Kiley.

I have a theory about why people in the arts don't go on the record that your piece doesn't consider: Yes, art is "low-stakes and chicken feed" compared to just about every for-profit industry--movies, telecom, auto, whatthefuckever. But when it comes to passion and what the work means to us, it is the opposite. Other professions don't require or involve that passion and/or the people can transition into other sectors more easily. We can't. Furthermore, theatre people are a community as much as an industry and as such we TALK. We TALK about TALKING. Often, we know who SAID what more than we know who DID what. Take all this and add in that opportunities are incredibly few, rare, and competitive given our low stakes chicken feed resources, and the answer is: People don't talk because they want to work again. Theatre and Art--whether we’re artists, staff, administrators, board, whatever--is extremely important to us and it is just too easy to never be hired again after saying the wrong thing.

But thanks for the article.

one tiny thing, i fired the disgruntled former employee, he didn't quit.

that's how he got all disgruntled. (it was a 'you can't fire me, i quit!' thing)

xom

What @7 said.

The theatre business model needs improvement or to be changed entirely, because what we've got now is clearly a low percentage, unsustainable model.

And before the requisite "Well, do you have any better ideas?" response, I'll just add that clearly, keeping things the way they are isn't all that good of one, is it?

@ 2. Sorry, Allison--I was just trying to be fair: I quoted something you wrote on a blog (so that was already out there) and then tried to accurately and briefly represent your argument for declining to be interviewed...

Seemed like the right thing to do. But since you've posted the whole email online, I guess it's a moot point.

Boards don't get along with the rest of the company because the only time either side notices the other (with the exception of the managing director and perhaps another manager or executive producer, depending on organization) is when there's a big problem. It's a cognitive bias that creates the rift you note.

@2: Really? The only statement on which you're quoted that isn't taken from public statements is from your e-mail, which you say you "really didn't expect" to be quoted (which I take to mean you didn't explicitly state it was off-the-record). Also, why do you care? It's not like any of your statements in that e-mail make you look bad, and printing your full e-mail doesn't add any context that was missing from how the quotes were used in the article.

There are resources out there for board development - in this city, you can't throw a rock without hitting The Shunpike, the United Way's trainings, Seattle Works' board trainings, etc. Board development is a crucial part of a director's job, along with everything else they do. It's a two way street and you simply can't just blame 'the board'. Nonprofits implode every day because of crappy boards, crappy directors, crappy fundraising, poor match between mission and community or clients, hell, because it was a bad idea to start with. I think we just notice it more with these examples because they are, by definition, public. But whether or not there's a legitimate crisis or if this is just a matter of the lifecycle of organizations remains to be seen.

Also, it's so hard to talk about failure without blaming ourselves personally, no matter how hard we tried. It's worse in nonprofits because there's more meaning at stake.

Bret, don't slap your board members. There's a strange thing that happens when you sit on a board sometimes, which is that you sometimes feel like you can't share too much information with board members of other likeminded organizations because of limited resources, gossip, poaching - I'm not excusing the near-criminal lack of curiosity that some board members have, but at one point I thought of starting a group for board chairs to get together and discuss challenges, etc., the way executive directors have groups to do that. Then I realized that lots of board chairs WOULDN'T want to share that information until they were off their boards. You walk a fine line between connecting with peers and advocating for your organization all the time and it's not the easiest thing in the world.

It really does behoove a director to keep their finger on the pulse of a board, be involved in the recruitment of new board members and have a hand in orientation. Board members are just well-meaning volunteers until they're all trained up.

"So what's the way forward? How do we avoid another preventable failure like Intiman, Giant Magnet, ConWorks, or Empty Space?"

Sure, the closing of these organizations are failures. They are also, and more importantly, an opportunity. To quote myself after a couple of drinks "The system is broke, WE gotta fix it!"

This conversation is occurring all over Seattle...the current model isn't working. Duh. A couple of weeks ago I sent out an email asking members of the arts community to come together and brainstorm "how to solve" instead of "someone should solve". Pointing fingers gets us nowhere.

The response to my call to arms has been positive, active, and encouraging. It is obviously counter productive to focus on the failings of the larger theatrical and arts institutions as a detriment. Focus on the negative and you perpetuate the negative.

There is a giant schism in the Seattle Theater Ecosystem between the large organizations and the grassroots (fringe) companies. The conversations emerging recently (both formally and informally) have generated three distinct ideas:

1. The future of The Intiman Theatre and its space provide opportunity to engage a broad community in generative conversations. The individuals and organizations that I have spoken with so far seem confident and engaged enough to develop formal proposals for new models.

2. Fringe theatre rarely finds opportunity for collective action and these conversations have highlighted the value of convening and cross-company organization and collaboration.

3. There is an astronomical number of small generative performance companies in the Seattle area who are creating new work that deserves the chance to reach larger audiences. There is an incredibly strong opportunity for better structures and programs that showcase and support new local work. ACT does this with the Central Heating Lab, but they are finding that there is far more work out there than they can support. What if we brought that idea to the next level?

Innovation is such a key trait of our region, lets capitalize on that and create something NEW that works for us. Interestingly enough, I have only come into contact with ONE PERSON who told me this idea isn't going to work.

"I tried that years ago Pollyanna. You're going to fail".

Bullshit. The iron is hot. A change is gonna come. There's something really sexy about pooling resources and working together. As a friend said the other day, "This doesn't need to be the next San Fransisco or the next New York, it needs to be the first Seattle".

Maridee

I think The Stranger is the only publication in town without a "fact checker". That is someone who calls and verifies information. People won't talk to you guys because you create myths instead of reporting facts.

"Other professions don't require or involve that passion and/or the people can transition into other sectors more easily."

Oh, go fuck yourself. No wonder nobody outside of arts communities gives a flying fuck about art. You leave a slime-trail of arrogance where-ever you go. There is a *lot* more to the world than preening on a stage.

Wow @19, overly generalize much?

Jeremy Barker over at Crosscut makes some salient points with regards to the simple fact that these types of situations are frequently much more complex than surface details may indicate, and that the ultimate failure of an organization can seldom be placed on the shoulders of a single individual or constituency within the organization itself; usually - and it was certainly the case with the Intiman - it's a combination of factors, in this instance abject inattention on the part of the board to its fundamental role as fiduciary overseer being just one among many.

The arts world loves to blame -- artists, staff, boards...all pointing fingers at each other.

While working for 20 years in NON-profit and FOR-profit theatres, I learned an important lesson about art. It IS about the money. Every fringe/community/regional theatre wants to make money, and they're lying if they say they don't. I defy any theatre artist to decline interest from a producer/investor, a movie deal, a book deal, or the Great White Way. There's nothing to be ashamed of...making "art" and making "money" aren't mutually exclusive.

It's called "show business," after all. It should be run like a business, and everyone should be accountable. Stop blaming and start working, if it isn't too late.

It's not surprising, I guess, that Brendan Kiley should not only fail to deliver the goods promised by his headline but that he even blew his thesis entirely.

The problem isn't that Seattle theater members won't talk about difficult issues; the real problem is that they won't talk about them to Brendan Kiley. His inability to cultivate trusted sources in a relationship of mutual respect in no way signifies a cultural problem in the community.

The question of why the community doesn't particularly trust and respect Brendan Kiley is an exercise best left to the reader.

@11 & @13:

The last paragraph of @2's letter makes it pretty clear that she is not interested in going on the record for this article.

Also: quoting comments that she made on a Slog post under a pseudonym is a little bit like overhearing some shit talk during happy hour and repeating it in front of the boss at the next staff meeting. Classy!

Wow. The knives come out. Interesting.

Well, at least we're having the conversation...

As someone who has worked at Giant Magnet for some time, I wonder why Brendan didn't contact any of the current staff to get their perspective on what happened over the last couple of years.

@21:

This sort of "blame the other guy" attitude is certainly not one held exclusively by people working in the arts; it's common among those engaged in ANY collective endeavor when the bottom falls out. You didn't hear the BP Execs verbally falling on their own swords when it came to assigning blame for the Gulf Spill; you've never heard Boeing top brass taking ownership for the 787 outsourcing debacle; nor any former Godman Sachs or WaMu honcho stopping the buck on their own desk when it came to fessing up to the recent mortgage meltdown, either.

Name the failure, and sure as shit the people who SHOULD be taking responsibility are inevitably the ones trying to foist the culpability off on someone else; it's just human nature, plain-and-simple.

@24:

Proof please, or STFU with the spurious, unsubstantiated rumor-mongering...

Great article. This is the thing that drives me crazy about some of the egos that seem to gravitate towards arts organizations, especially non-profit arts organizations. There seems to be this belief that if you just wish hard enough, you’ll suddenly create a universe where you don’t have to spend less than you take in. The mindset that “Non-profits are creatures of market failure by definition” is the very thing that destroys so many of them. Of course the goal isn’t to make money, but the only way you can fund your next weird, crazy idea is to make sure you have the resources necessary to pull it off. So many of these types expect that imagining the dollar in their pocket is five is all it takes. Telling them anything less means you are trying to run things like T-Mobile. Then when it blows up, they all sit around pointing fingers anonymously.

I can tell you my opinion on the question you ask in the very first paragraph. Jobs in the theater industry are scarce. No one wants to alienate any potential employer by bashing anyone that might have been involved in the collapse. You never know who you might be working for tomorrow or if you are going to work at all. No one wants to rock the boat. Especially when it's already at the bottom.

@27: As with Giant Magnet, Brendan did not contact any of the senior staff at Intiman for this article. No knives needed, Brendan, as long as you spoon it to us?

Number 24, 28 raise another good point: she might have been totally beloved AND an alcoholic who slowly ran the org into the ground. A classy board would ensure that you never knew the latter and they'd look like assholes no matter what. I'm not saying this is the case there, just that boards have a legal liability if they start talking about shit like that. Plus, it is a small town.

And though it's unreasonable in real life, every org should have a contingency plan in case their director is hit by a bus. The mission should be larger than the person. Or maybe you don't need to be a nonprofit, fiscal sponsorship is a great choice that's underutilized.

This isn't cloak and dagger stuff, it's just what happens when people work together. And Brendan, you might want to interpret for us what the 990s looked like over the last few years.

Great point at #30 that probably also illustrates why influential people in theatre can't seem to have or maintain a serious, productive conversation at all about theatre issues. Everyone's too afraid of losing their seat at the table to speak frankly, lest they piss the wrong person off.

However, it appears the next logical question to ask is, "Do you really want to preserve your place on a sinking ship?"

24,28,32: I think if you're going to discuss/deny allegations of the merit/character of Marilyn Raichle, you may want to re-introduce some relevant information.

Oh and look at the link I posted above, #25. Allison made no secret of her identity when she made that comment.

Kind of hard to plead the 5th via internet anonymity when you punctuate a public rant with your full name and title.

The other issue with this piece of course is the lack of perspective about the arts orgs that weathered similar storms. Looking into what worked instead of what didn't might actually provide the insight that Kiley is promising here.

@31 He sure didn't contact this former senior staff member from Intiman.

@32:

Over the past three or four years I've perused nearly a decade's worth of Intiman's 990's (some of the more recent returns can be found here, although you may be required to set up an account - it's free - to view them), and it should have been obvious to anyone who could read them correctly that Intiman was running significant deficits - frequently into the high six-figures - for the past seven or eight years, if not longer.

This long-term, lingering debt was one of the things that prompted Intiman to establish their endowment fund back in 2000, as a means of creating some cash-stability within the organization. And for a few years their red ink did drop significantly; IIRC, three or four years ago it was down to a "mere" $500K. But, while some of that may have been the result of increased contributions and ticket sales, they never really addressed the most significant debt-drivers, namely, programming large, expensive productions utilizing scads of out-of-town talent, and reining in a rising-star AD who seemed to be more focussed on padding out his resume with NYC and European credits, than on taking care of business "at home". These factors, combined with the continuing depressed local economy which negatively impacted contributions from all sectors, a general trend of patrons moving away from purchasing annual subscription packages in favor of single-performance tickets, plus a board either unable or unwilling to make the kind of tough-minded financial decisions circumstances required, IMO ALL contributed to Intiman's eventual downfall.

In fact, this very issue came up with regards to Intiman right around the same time ACT was undergoing their own financial melt-down several years ago, and there was a question even then of whether Seattle could realistically support three major regional theatre companies in the burgeoning Great Recession, and whether it would eventually be ACT or Intiman (which, it was no great secret, was on the financial ropes even then) that would fall by the wayside (The Seattle Rep, as the region's flagship theatre company has always been perceived as something of a cultural sacred cow "Too Big To Fail").

ACT has managed to weather its fiscal tempest, in part by going back to its roots, and by focusing on supporting local talent; whether Intiman will be able to successfully reincarnate itself from the ashes of its own demise is something we'll have to wait-and-see, but, regrettably, I for one am not optimistic about the likelihood of that occurring.

While there are some interesting points in this article, it is hardly balanced or fully open. Too often I see this "blame the board" attitude, especially WRT non-profits. It's really a case of hot-potato. Whoever is left holding the hot potato at the end is blamed, regardless of the road that got the organization there. The sort of dialog presented in the article dissuades great and caring people in the city from wanting to donate their time and money to sit on the boards of any arts organization.

I take particular issue with the description of ConWorks demise. The article fails to interview any board member and also fails to disclose Matt's long ties to The Stranger as a former staffer in the article. IMO, ConWorks downfall can be traced back to when Meg Shiffler departed as artistic director and Matt assumed artistic direction (in addition to administrative direction) instead of having him and the board find a strong artistic director to be his foil.

Matt's work to nurture and grow ConWorks and move it into it's new space can be classified as nothing short of astounding and heroic, but the lackluster programming that followed has as much as anything to do with the organization's downfall. I worked with ConWorks and Matt many times over the years. While he's a brilliant fundraiser and administrator, he can be caustic and thankless to work with. To classify an event several years in the making (Matt's firing and ConWork's ultimate collpase) as being the result of a single action is a gross oversimplification of what happened, and reflects the oversimplification presented in the article as a whole.

I worked at the Intiman off and on over the course of 18 years, under three different artistic directors. I no longer live in Seattle but I try to keep in touch with what's going on there. I was very saddened but not surprised by the Intiman's demise.
Most of what's been written in this thread of comments has focused on the responsibilities and failures of the board, but I can say without hesitation that none of the artistic directors I worked under had a practical understanding of what kind of money it would take to realise their visions. They didn't know what lumber cost or how much time it took to tailor a suit. They didn't understand the relationship between hiring inexperienced, cheap, disposable labor and having to do things twice and the real cost of that. They wanted to believe that an A-list designer would be willing to come to Seattle and build a show for a fraction of what a real budget would be. All of them were living in a when-I-was-young-we-used-to-work-for-$50-a-week world instead of a carpenters-have-to-pay-the-rent world. So they consistantly cut the budgets to make the numbers work and then went right ahead and overproduced without any regard to those reduced figures. None of them took the production budgets seriously (especially on their own shows). So it's no wonder the house of cards fell apart. The egos and ambitions couldn't be sustained. And the cult of personality surrounding them as directiors meant that no one else had the power to say No and hold them accountable, not the boards, the executive directors and certainly not the production managers (that would have been a sure-fire wasy to loose your job).
It has always seemed to me that artistic directors should not direct. It's like being in a picture you're simultaineously trying to paint. It leads to a huge conflict of interest and neglect of one duty or the other. Why do boards insist on looking for directors and not artistic administrators? I would be willing to bet that this has been a major contributing factor at the regional theatres that have closed in the last ten years.

.Previewing Your Comment
Re: What Happened at Intiman
Seattle is a unique cultural environment; organizations rise and fall, young people flock here to start careers, artists mature, blossom and die. Brendan and his task masters at the Stranger should be applauded for continuing to provide coverage of the culture in Seattle, and not just the products it puts on display. It’s not boring, it’s rare, and this too shall pass, and all too soon.

A primary goal of government, foundation, and corporate funding is to create stability in arts organizations. In all of the examples cited in the article, the boards were tossed into a frenzy of destructive activity by real or perceived threats, and they had no one to turn to for advice or just to tell them to think before jumping into action. One way the funders could to promote stability is to provide a hot line for itchy boards (or administrators) to call before they jump.

This is an interesting article that targets a huge problem that the American theater has been unable to solve for years--instead of funding theaters with tax money, we fund them with corporate money raised by board members who try to turn theaters into businesses (and often try to control what theaters produce). Board members are rarely to blame for failing to fund theater, but they are often responsible for failing to fund the work the theater really wants to do. Government funding, and a lot of it, is the best solution. Pennies a day will keep our theaters strong.
Davi Napoleon www.thefastertimes.com/theatertalk/

Excellent work, Comte. One might even call it investigative journalism.

Nonprofit Board Members at (Intiman Class) LORT Theaters resemble actors in a special way: Some are exceptional; most are pedestrian; a few should be taken out to pasture and PUT DOWN.

After 35 years working non-stop for these people, I've become a full-time pendant at a private college. Maybe because part of my pedagogical duties includes tracking the elusive behaviors and publicly stated services of current 501(c)(3)' s, some helpful information has surfaced. Here's an honest place for ALL Boards to begin:

WELCOME TO THE BOARD: Your Guide to Effective Participation, Fisher Howe (Jossey-Bass, 1995)

--The Holy Writ for any prospective Trustee. You're one of the most important people in the organization. Find out why. Required.

NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT-Principles and Practice, Michael J. Worth, (Sage Publications, 2009)

--You likely come from the monied universe. Apples: meet Oranges. Required.

NONPROFIT KIT FOR DUMMIES, Hutton/Phillips, (For Dummies, 2009)

--For those who prefer lots of sugar on their corn flakes. Recommended.

Always remember: your skills at Boeing, at Perkins Coie, at Swedish, at Microsoft--got you through the door. But a love of the game isn't enough. You have to understand it. Let the process begin.

Northside Tony, I'm in favor of sensible fiduciary practices for sure, but god save me from your vision of art.

If you want to figure out how to win, you should spend less time talking to people who lost.

@29, I think you nailed it.

@37, what are you trying to do? Run Intiman like it's T-Mobile?!? Nice analysis. Unfortunately, too many arts administrators don't think hard-headed analysis is part of their job, which is foolish and unsustainable. I am myself an arts administrator, and I defend them, but this drives me up the wall.

@46 "Just produce what people are likely to want to see" is a canard. Intiman didn't close because people weren't coming to see plays there. They were. A different bleak best-seller from the previous season was the biggest hit of their recent history.

The current funding model for large non-profit theatre is broken and no amount of cheery hits only programming is going to change that. It's not actually about the product on stage... that's just the easiest thing for rubber-neckers to bitch about.

@49:

I believe you're being facetious, yes? Because the whole point of being a "non-profit" is that the org SHOULDN'T be run like a "for-profit". Which of course isn't to say that fiduciary oversight isn't important; it is in fact vital and necessary if the organization is going to sustain itself long-term.

But, I gather from your comment that you fully recognize that, even if some of the people with whom you work perhaps don't.

It seems like one big take-away from Intiman's troubles is that while a theater can, to some extent, buy prestige (respect from the New York arts crowd, Tony awards, etc) that sort of prestige does not necessarily translate into a rosier revenue picture. Intiman received the accolades that their bloated production budgets helped "earn" them, but their income remained largely static. The accolades were not redeemable for cash.

However, for Artistic Directors, prestige does translate into a rosier employment outlook. Mr. Sher walked away with a wonderful resumé and a chance to finally work in New York full time. Whatever role he played in pushing Intiman's budgets into the red, he came out on top.

Comte's right. It's not that you can't run a theater as a for-profit business, obviously, it's just that there's a difference between the two. Non-profits exist to facilitate work that's valuable for which a proper market doesn't exist. They're products of a market failure to provide either (a) a proper cultural outlet for a community, or (b) a risk-taking artistic venture. It's a slightly different question whether most succeed at either due to high ticket prices/access issues, and programming choices that earn them monikers like "commercial non-profit theater," which I rather like as a descriptive term. But there is a difference between them and for-profits. So fundamentally they have a different business-model. The question I think people should actually be asking--which I've tried posing various ways--is whether something like the Intiman properly served its purpose and should have been saved, or should have been let go. In the end, non-profits do have their own decisionmaking capacity, and as much as we like to argue about what one "should" do, or how a specific theater could better serve a community, ultimately the ones we're talking about aren't obligated to actually change. The people here who think equally valid work could have been done more affordably, with more local artists, serving the community better are barking up the wrong tree--the Intiman was likely never going to do that, but its absence could create the opportunity for one to do that again by building a replacement. Was the board going to stop hiring New York directors and instead install someone committed to Seattle? Not likely.

Its collapse creates more opportunities for the local arts community. I realize the big theaters are attractive because of their resources and existing customer base, but they're never going to just turn those over to the local arts. Get wise, roll up your sleeves, and look at the Intiman's demise as a vaccuum to be filled.

Comte's right. It's not that you can't run a theater as a for-profit business, obviously, it's just that there's a difference between the two. Non-profits exist to facilitate work that's valuable for which a proper market doesn't exist. They're products of a market failure to provide either (a) a proper cultural outlet for a community, or (b) a risk-taking artistic venture. It's a slightly different question whether most succeed at either due to high ticket prices/access issues, and programming choices that earn them monikers like "commercial non-profit theater," which I rather like as a descriptive term. But there is a difference between them and for-profits. So fundamentally they have a different business-model. The question I think people should actually be asking--which I've tried posing various ways--is whether something like the Intiman properly served its purpose and should have been saved, or should have been let go. In the end, non-profits do have their own decisionmaking capacity, and as much as we like to argue about what one "should" do, or how a specific theater could better serve a community, ultimately the ones we're talking about aren't obligated to actually change. The people here who think equally valid work could have been done more affordably, with more local artists, serving the community better are barking up the wrong tree--the Intiman was likely never going to do that, but its absence could create the opportunity for one to do that again by building a replacement. Was the board going to stop hiring New York directors and instead install someone committed to Seattle? Not likely.

Its collapse creates more opportunities for the local arts community. I realize the big theaters are attractive because of their resources and existing customer base, but they're never going to just turn those over to the local arts. Get wise, roll up your sleeves, and look at the Intiman's demise as a vaccuum to be filled.

There's a reason we have the term 'drama queen'.

Brendan, I'll repeat this publicly in response to your reposting this thread to the SLOG and complaining that no-one would talk. A move reminiscent of your complaining that the last Shitstorm was tedious when your own moderator started it off with a two-hour argument about whether there should be a Shakespeare moratorium.

You were asking people to finger someone. And you were looking for volunteers? To go on record? At what point does this implicit idealism become just a convenient excuse for throwing up your hands and pretending these questions are insoluble?

If you really WANT these answers. If you want answers that might get people fired, shunned, sued or charged with crimes, you have to do better than leaving voicemail.

Start with Intiman's endowment. Every endowment has rules for how the interest can be spent, and provisions for how the principal can be spent. At some point one or more people at the Intiman started spending down the principal of the endowment - something on the order of a million dollars as I understand. Who authorized this? Were the rules followed? Where are the Board minutes where this was discussed? Who was there? Who's signatures are on those transfers? How could the Administration and Board repeatedly authorize this presumably emergency measure repeatedly, and then profess ignorance that there was a growing financial crisis?

Get a name, tell that person you're going to hang it around their neck. Stick this threat of public humiliation in their eye until they point somewhere else. THEN you're cooking, 'cause you've broken the Wall of Silence. Force them to turn on each other in desperate attempts to deflect increasingly serious charges. When the music stops, you'll be able to write an article without following the title with a silent question-mark.

I humbly suggest that THAT be your approach. If you're going to pursue an inquiry into something this serious, something that could end careers and result in penalties and prison, Seattle Nice isn't going to cut it.

I've enjoyed your more substantive writing and would like nothing more than The Stranger to be my one-stop-shop for arts news, the latest in sexual deviancy and wrath-of-god class muckraking.

But like I said, I've already made this suggestion. I'm sure you have your reasons for taking a more polite tack. I offer it here as a suggestion to whomever might be interested.

Someone just suggested that my last post sounded confrontational. Goodness - wouldn't want THAT sort of reputation.

But as an exercise here's a more upbeat suggestion, an elaboration on the sentiment I expressed in @48 - STOP TALKING TO LOSERS.

Who the fuck cares about what the people running The Intiman think? The official party line is a mix of ignorance and genteel incompetence. At least The Empty Space was hit by an earthquake - the leadership of The Intiman had NO IDEA how bad things were until they hired Susan Trapnell. They had to raise $500,000 to afford to close.

This is like asking the back of the bus for rehab tips. What's the point?

You spoke to Lane Czaplinski for this article. On The Boards presents some of the strangest stuff going in this city. Really, really beautiful, strange, off-putting stuff. And last I heard, they sell at something like 90% with a blend of international, regional and local art with the occasional porn screening for variety.

Write an article about THAT. Ask The Village Theatre about how their efforts are going. Ask the folks at ACT how they turned it around and how they continue to avoid a relapse.

Just STOP this post-mortem about The Intiman. It's just an example of what happens when no-one owns the money, and everyone can just walk away when it fails. Unless it's YOUR blood, it's all academic and you just don't care - not really. And they didn't care ... not really ... not enough to know what was going on ... not enough to keep asking when they didn't get answers ... not in time to stop it.

PPS - Turnabout is fair play, right Brendan? I mean - you keep telling me how to run a theatre.

Wow. This is all news to me (I've been out of Seattle for some years now).

I don't have a lot to say other than FUCK BOARDS. I know they're a requirement for not-for-profit status, but they sound like a giant ball ache. I think the regional theater model is pretty much fucked anyway and cry few tears over its demise; hopefully through all the necessary carnage an exciting and sustainable new model will emerge.

@47... Society is not protecting you from "my vision" of the arts... it's protecting you from yours. Yours isn't sustainable.

In the last two years, I've gone to the Village, ACT, Paramount and Redmond Second Story, as well as several smaller venues. Haven't been to the Intiman in years. Redmond Second Story (used to be Redmond Town Rep) started strong years ago and then went through a real crisis when it got too self-indulgent too. Like it or not, you need MONEY to put on a production, and money comes directly (ticket sales) and indirectly (sponsors) through happy attendees. Your vision may be art, but not enough people want it to support it. You can have your vision of art, or you can have dinner, but probably not both.

Wow. Reading all these comments from the Theater Folks getting all bent out of shape, it's not difficult to understand how or why they ran their theaters into the ground...

@14 Thanks for noting the board development resources out there. Seattle Works has a class starting Tuesday night for people thinking about joining a nonprofit board. So many people join not really understanding the role. Class is called "The Bridge" - Tues 6/14, 6/28 & 7/12 6-9pm. www.seattleworks.org

United Way and Shunpike are also great resources.

http://www.uwkc.org/partner-with-us/nonp…

http://www.shunpike.org/programs/arts-bu…

@14 Thanks for noting the resources out there for board members.

Seattle Works has a class for people considering board service - The Bridge. Next round is coming up soon Tues 6/14, 6/28, 7/12 6-9pm. http://seattleworks.org/AboutUs/index.ph…

United Way and Shunpike also great resources:
http://www.uwkc.org/partner-with-us/nonp…

http://www.shunpike.org/programs/arts-bu…

How to blow life into a out dated out performed out stimulated pastime?

web cast! big background screens for scenes! a multitude of light effects!

Republicans were wowed when W Bush's microphone came out of the floor?

Technology they all screamed!

Its like a restaurant as atmosphere is a big first thing to overcome! then the food and service and then finding some one who is not a total jerk who would not burn down an entire city just to keep whipping a dead horse to keep feeding their kids macaroni and bologna 24/7?

the theater should be doing all age events for bread and butter and having old geezer events one weekend a month.

Anyone who liked this article should immediately go out and watch Slings and Arrows, a three-season Canadian TV series about running a theatre festival. Pretty hilarious:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387779/

SOUNDS like closed loop management that primarily concentrates on closed loop management. The lack of anybody here talking about the fucking audience speaks volumes. Really, guys melting down because of chairs and garabge bags and how to mop the fucking floor and such kiddy shit really isn't tolerated in very many professional environments. True or not, this just serves to paint this segment of Seattle as a petty, immature, shrill, and, sadly, small hearted, bunch of figurative inbreds. Seattle stage "Artists" and "Arts Professionlas" become so concerned with who is sniffing whom's butt and their "standing" that the forest vanishes into the tress and hubris and rot and Seattle mold soon fill the spaces, as it always will left unchecked. This is typical Seattle Arts (capital S, capital A) bullshit, creamy and putrid, and (alas) sad, as usual. it must be the lack of sunlight that creates these creatures. The fucking audience in Seattle is what is important; you know, the readers, the viewers, the listeners, the regular folks who make it ALL happen. A fucking tempest in a fucking teapot; the sound of one hand clapping. yawn, urp.

I'm really GLAD I don't know any of these folks, they really seem like a bunch of narcissistic assholes.

Cornish has just hired a new President who was Provost--head academic officer--at CalArts. Under her reign, faculty rights/governance collapsed. No one from Cornish asked us as to her performance. The rule of thumb with art/academic institutions is: ensure management types have a safe haven. Perhaps people just need to radically deflate their expectations of what art and culture provides to society. It is amazing how afraid most people are to make a critique of aesthetic powers-that-be....

what happened to my first comment? In any case, the reason why people in the arts are reluctant to speak is not difficult to figure out: the charge of anti-professionalism is hurled at anyone who is impolite. Politeness ensures silence so that the management types can continue to change/trade positions, from one institution to the other. E.g. the incoming President of Cornish was Provost--chief academic officer--at Calarts, where faculty governance evaporated under her reign. Yet no one from Cornish asked us as to her performance: as long as the arts are privatised, even if invoking the public for legitimation, the managerial dimension will become more dominant. Control and domination always trumps reality....

This is one of the best articles on Seattle art I have yet to read. It explores bottom line issues that no one wants to talk about. Including money losing art-for-art productions, box office incomes that don't cover costs, and the sacrificial money raised by board members.

However, this article doesn't raise some of the deeper issues facing contemporary arts.

Art used to be to be a beacon. A lighthouse beaming light through the fog of a distant strange shore. But now, it's mostly a social event. The art itself has become unimportant.

A big part of this problem is the "mafias" that control the arts. One of the mafias is the pseudo-Marxist art critics who value social criticism over artistic expression. Another mafia is people with sexual and racial preferences who favor each other, regardless of talent.

I know this statement will be accused of being elitist, sexist and racist. But in the arts, the reverse is the practical reality. All anyone has to do is look at attendance. A couple of plays a season about marginal situations can expand awareness. But season after season of preaching plays is going to turn anyone off.

When the social and racial agendas that are important to critics and insiders become more important than artistic expression, audiences will stop attending. And regardless of pointing fingers, that's what happening.

In my biased opinion, the Empty Space Theater produced many of the best plays I've ever seen. And I lived in NYC for nearly two decades, where I went to a lot of plays, including off-off Broadway productions and avant-garde productions in the streets.

Seattle's non-profit boards are not the problem. It's the content of the art. A brilliant play and a few good actors, with low-budget production, will always pull an audience.

Bottom line: for theater, if there's no audience, or the costs exceed the draw, it's bad art. The proof? The Bard was able to get his big points across in crowd-pleasing cost-effective productions.

Obviously, he didn't have to compete with TV and movies. But contemporary theaters have to. So work harder. Say what the media can't say. Take full advantage of the opportunity. And then we'll come to the show.

I'm speaking only as someone who attended one performance at the Intiman Theatre, yet had experienced Bartlett Sher's directing ability through the Idaho Shakespeare Festiveal plays he directed several summers in Boise, Idaho. Because of his reputation, I decided to purchase a ticket to see All The King's Men, a musical version, no less, a few years ago even though I was not excited about the play itself. I was wanting the Intiman experience. The Barlett Sher experience. Imagine my horror when the play started and one of the first musical numbers used the "n" word again, and again, and again. I looked around the audience to see if anyone else were as stunned as I was, and many were, but I was angry enough to get up, leave the theatre, and demand my money back, more as a means of notifying theatre of my displeasure than anything, although the cost of the ticket was not inconsiderable. I was told to contact the managing director at a later date, so I did. I received a very unsatisfactory response, esentially telling me that I was a hick (a misrepresentation of someone who has attended plays in such "rural" settings as London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Milan, LA, and San Francisco) and for not understanding the artistic integrity involved in choosing to use the "n" word. I was told that there had been community outreach by the Intiman Theatre to reach consensus with the use of the "n" word. I realize that theatre should challenge audiences and often break down barriers to understanding, but in this case the only challenge was to remain seated.

I'm speaking only as someone who attended one performance at the Intiman Theatre, yet had experienced Bartlett Sher's directing ability through the Idaho Shakespeare Festiveal plays he directed several summers in Boise, Idaho. Because of his reputation, I decided to purchase a ticket to see All The King's Men, a musical version, no less, a few years ago even though I was not excited about the play itself. I was wanting the Intiman experience. The Barlett Sher experience. Imagine my horror when the play started and one of the first musical numbers used the "n" word again, and again, and again. I looked around the audience to see if anyone else were as stunned as I was, and many were, but I was angry enough to get up, leave the theatre, and demand my money back, more as a means of notifying theatre of my displeasure than anything, although the cost of the ticket was not inconsiderable. I was told to contact the managing director at a later date, so I did. I received a very unsatisfactory response, esentially telling me that I was a hick (a misrepresentation of someone who has attended plays in such "rural" settings as London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Milan, LA, and San Francisco) and for not understanding the artistic integrity involved in choosing to use the "n" word. I was told that there had been community outreach by the Intiman Theatre to reach consensus with the use of the "n" word. I realize that theatre should challenge audiences and often break down barriers to understanding, but in this case the only challenge was to remain seated.

@74 - he means Norwegian

@45 - as a "full-time pendant" where do you hang at the university?

@too many to count - I am SHOCKED that so many arts' world people do not know "it's" from "its"

@Brendan Kiley, reporter - this article is a sausage. It was absolutely delicious to ingest but I am wary of knowing how it was crafted.

Carry on.

Brendan, you inspired me to finally share what I would like to see happening over at Intiman:

http://seattlest.com/2011/06/15/open_let…

Have a lot more detail kicking around my head, but figure people can only listen to so much of my rambling.

I recommend reading 'Third Sector Management, The Art of Managing Nonprofit Organizations' by William B. Werther, Jr. and Evan M. Berman. It should be required reading for all new nonprofit board members, and might have prevented two nasty hostile takeovers in non-arts nonprofits I used to belong to. No organization is immune from conflicting egos, poor communications, differing goals, economic fluctuations. What might work in for-profits can destroy the cohesion of a non-profit. Business management techniques have to be applied in a measured fashion so they don't run roughshod over the quirkiness that inspires and drives a group.
This requires cooperation and humility as well as ambition. It was a 'surgical strike' that killed the goose that laid the golden egg.